Anamnesis

“The truth about reality is always in our souls. The whole of searching and learning is recollection. “ Socrates

Thierry Urbain – Anamnesis

Thierry Urbain’s series ‘Anamnesis’* – a journey through Mediterranean landscapes as a process of remembrance inspired by Plato’s concept of innate knowledge of everything and part of the circle of human’s life.

Plato suggested in his ‘Meno’ via Socrates’ words, that “since the soul is immortal and has been born many times, she has beheld all things in this world and the next, and there is nothing she has not learnt, so it is not surprising that she can remember what she once knew about virtue and other things.” Knowledge is in the soul from eternity, but each time the soul incarnates, its knowledge is forgotten at the moment of birth.

With lot of grain and reminiscent of a diary, the artist illustrates the idea of re-awakening (an– = un-, amnesis = forgetting, as in amnesia) and recovery of what one has forgotten, especially moral, existential, spiritual.